Thursday, May 21, 2015

From ‘The Myth of Wu Tao-Tzu’ by Sven Lindqvist

Few deserts are so well taken care of as the Australian.
Every stone, every bush, every waterhole has its specific owner and custodian,
its sacred history and religious significance. Every holy place has its own
holy picture.

The eternal truths of Aboriginal religion are expressed in
the surrounding landscape…..

‘Following the summer of 1902 came a hard winter. Great
numbers of the unemployed formed into processions, as many as a dozen at a
time, and daily marched through the streets of London crying for bread.’

That I had never seen in Stockholm. I had never seen
‘tottery old men and women searching in the garbage for rotten potatoes, beans,
and vegetables.’

……..Hermann Hesse…….. wrote an article on the task of
intellectuals in war……..

The first casualty of war is the truth. Does a Japanese
drama become worse because the Japanese fleet has shelled Tsingtao? Has a bad
German book become superior to an English book because those countries are at
war? …..

That is what they want us to think. We must refuse to
participate in this deceit.

It is understandable that politicians and soldiers are
blinded by hatred of the enemy. But when intellectuals are also seized by
warmongering and write battle poems, boycott ‘enemy’ art and defame whole
peoples – who will then defend the truth?

Goethe did not write war poems in 1813. He retained his own
inner freedom and followed his intellectual conscience. Anyone who has once
believed in the idea of humanity, in the universality of science, in art with
no national boundaries, must not betray his conviction now that it is being put
to the test. If intellectuals betray spiritual values, war will destroy the
foundations of Europe. Someone must uphold peace even if the whole world is at
war. Someone must attempt to preserve as much peace as possible – that is the
task the future poses today.

Each stroke is irretrievable. Alteration is a mortal sin and
a child can spot it. So in calligraphy it is often a matter of waiting, but
never hesitating.

Calligraphy is not an art for the rebel. It is based on
disciplined spontaneity, inconceivable without rules and doctrine. The doctrine
is the sum of tradition: a way of performing. Mastery consists of achieving
freedom in relation to tradition. And freedom consists of a kind of
assimilation of the rules agreed on, so that no decision from above is
necessary. Judgement can be left to the hand.

You no longer support the arrow once it has left the bow,
runs an old saying.

So write nothing on the first day. Just look at the
character and let it sink into your consciousness. Don’t write on the next day
either. Just wait and let your desire work until the knowledge has penetrated
throughout your entire body.

Wait until your hand knows it.

And nothing else.

Wait until your hand is empty and everything else has fallen
out of it.

But when your entire consciousness embraces the character
ande nothing else – then grind the ink, pick up the brush and give your hand
the freedom of your heart. And with one strong blow, as if from the tail of a
fish, your ‘self’ has vanished.

It is in your hand that everything has to be. At every
moment it chooses between a thousand possibilities. It is too late to issue
orders. It is not the time to explain. Whatever does not exist stored as
experience in your hand is useless. What at that moment does not go up into the
movement is irrelevant. Your will can only block. It is useless to draw in air
and pump yourself up. It can happen only by itself. We want to draw inside what
is beyond our control and thus force it. But what is best will never allow
itself to be forced. That can be achieved only in the way the calligrapher
achieves it.

Although my arms, legs, head and body still obeyed me, at
the same time they added something extra, something quite unnecessary. I wanted
to place my hands and feet naturally, but they made certain flourishes of their
own, and that resulted in a pose – like at a photographer’s.

Strange! Although I am an ordinary, natural person, I simply
couldn’t sit still, and behaved like a bad actor. Theatrical falseness was
closer to me than genuine naturalness. They said afterwards that my expression
turned stupid and I looked guilty.

‘Lets go on now’, said Tortsov, after I had been tormented
enough. ‘But we’ll eventually come back to these exercises and learn to sit
still.’

‘Teach us to sit?’ the pupils said in wonder. ‘Wasn’t that
what we were doing?’

Instead of answering, Tortsov quickly got up and walked in a
businesslike manner over to the chair, then sank into it as if he were back at
home.

Afghanistan – an old tribal society where man is still not
subdued. Everyone I meet considers himself to be just as much a human being as
I am. After India, this is wonderful, refreshing, an almost unbelievable
experience.

Is it their religion? Or is it the mountains? Or that they
have never been colonized? It is certainly not a high standard of living and
modern civilization. The poverty is profound. Here as everywhere the big
farmer, the usurer and the merchant form a steadfast trinity. But there is
counterbalance.

‘The rich have traditional duties to the village and the
family. That has an economically levelling effect.’

It is said that a travelling foreigner can get shot in
Afghanistan. No such risk in India, but I would rather be afraid myself than
see others cringe.

The British brought peace and order to India. They created a
kind of rule of law, but that also entailed the right of the landowner, the
usurer, and the merchant to oppress. It made the masses helpless in the hands
of those who had the economic and social advantage.

Guns and a wild determination to use them were what saved
the Afghans from being civilized by the British Empire. And nothing but guns
and determination will, in a pre-democratic, pre-organized society, guarantee
that the interests of the people are to some extent satisfied.

I am a pacifist. But after seeing the fear, the mad fright
in Indian eyes, that unnatural abasement both ostentatious and ashamed, but
most of all cowed, humiliated and broken – after having been in India, I am
glad to see armed peasants.

It must be possible. The prospect of a clearer and freer way
of living has always been held out to me. It must exist. I’ve seen it in poetry
and pictures. I’ve heard it in music. There’s a fearlessness there which makes
my life foolish. There are opportunities for happiness there which frighten me
more than unhappiness. There’s an abyss in reverse, and one falls upwards.

Why, then, do I live as I do?

……India ……… But if you don’t hang yourself in your hotel
room on the very first evening – and what use would that be? – then a creeping
dehumanization occurs. The simplest humanity demands that you try to save the
life of another person. In a city where the cleansing department collects the
bodies of the dead off the streets at dawn and in uncertain cases turns the
sleeping over with a foot to see if they are still alive – in a city of that
kind, even the simplest humanity demands too much. You lose faith in it.